we've moved into TJT

Big Love rehearsals are taking place in the space! Wahey! A month before we open - almost unheard of!

Our set is not yet built because there's other stuff happening in TJT before we preview, but at least we get to work with a fair amount of our actual architecture.

The only downside is that TJT is too far from the yoga studio for me to attend KK's Tuesday/Thursday class from 4:30 to 6.

You can read about the fabulous KK here:

http://www.yogatreesf.com/teachers/KKLedford.html

please

see Little Miss Sunshine if you haven't already done so.

http://www2.foxsearchlight.com/littlemisssunshine/

a post with two tangentially related parts

I love tea and tea loves me.

Today I bought one of these from Rainbow Grocery. It's a marvelous creation and renders me all the more ecstatic as I sip my Maiden's Ecstasy Pu-Erh from Samovar.

yum.

Speaking of ecstasy, I went to Planned Parenthood today for my cervical colposcopy (aka peering at the pussy, ogling the ooh-yea, gazing at the gash, probing the poonany, staring into the slit, scoping the snatch, tending to the twat, contemplating the cooch...) and I saw their new (?) ad for Emergency Contraception. I can't find a picture online, but the ad uses an approximation of a generic, early 90s rave aesthetic including a woman with blurry eyes balancing an EC pill on her extended tongue. Now, if it's effective in alerting women to the availability of EC, then I'm all for it (notwithstanding the fact that the Planned Parenthood Golden Gate bathroom is the first location I've seen it); but it does seem like *precisely* the sort of ad that would make the Christian right just cream themselves in a feverish, jizz-tastic fit of anti-choice/anti-drug mania. It visually positions EC as something comprarable to a cool party drug; which simultaneously makes it seem potentially illicit *and* like something one might casually suck down at 3 am on a Saturday. Curious.

The good news is the FDA finally approved over-the-counter distribution of EC last week, except, unsurprisingly, to girls under the age of 17.

a plea for comments

I get fabulous e-mails from some of you in response to my blog. Now, I love your e-mails and I also love comments on the blog.

So. Please, please, please, pretty please enhance my web-bound self-representation with your quips, quotes, and other insights.

Here is a picture of me looking sweet and innocent. I could pass for 17, despite the fact that I snapped the photo this morning.



When I typed that sentence initially, I wrote "the smorning" instead of "this morning." I did it again and it came out "this smorning".

What do you suppose that means?

Comments please.

biking in Marin

We road around Lake Lagunitas and Lake Phoenix in Ross/San Anselmo. I am very proud of my bike (a Bianchi Volpe, for those who care and aren't already privy to this information), which, despite being fundamentally a touring bike, maneuvered quite gracefully around and over the rocks, gravel, and dirt. Now the ancient layer of city grime is buried beneath a newly acquired dusty stucco.

Thyona: Sometimes people talk a good game, but when push comes to shove they're weak right to the core.

Olympia: Except for Constantine.

Thyona: And except for me. I haven't given in either. This game isn't over till someone lies on the ground with the flesh pulled off their bones.

I think we should do that scene on bicycles.

Hard. Core.

This is Tony with a leaf on his head.

Guess who put it there.

This is the two of us hard at work on the courts at Dolores Park.



A pose.

Los Angeles

is way more fun than most NYers and San Franciscans would have you believe.

I just returned from a wonderful weekend of time with Tony on his home turf.



We went to the beach three days in a row, sometimes graced with the company of Takahir"oooooooh" Yamamoto.


I got a pretty horrific (though cute in a Coppertone baby-esque way) sunburn on Sunday.

On Friday I went to an Anusara class in Silverlake and ran into actor and friend-of-many-friends Thessaly Lerner, whom I haven't seen in years. On Saturday I watched the Burning Wheel/SITI training compositions, planted some collaborative seeds, and met a bunch of warm, gregarious people including Jose Luis Valenzuela, Chair of the Directing Program at UCLA, and actor and playwright Evelina Fernandez who run the Latino Theater Company together in LA.

I also watched the movie Kung Fu Hustle, which has almost certainly changed my life.



Read about it here:

http://www.kungfuhustle.com

Monday morning we drove home. Tony drove most of the way.

Then I wiped the sleep from my eyes and did the final third.



Now we're back in San Francisco. Big Love rehearsals continue to be phenomenal and challenging. The show opens in a month.

no end to the Trannyshack photos!

I think these are the best of the bunch.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heklina/page7/

Big Meeting, Big Love

I believe in maintaining archives to document the collaborative process.

To that end, here is the record of the very important meeting Laley and I had last night.

Note the technological innovations and advanced observation and communication techniques at work.

mwah

Laley Lippard is lovely and fierce. And foxy. And full of fabulous goofiness.



perhaps it's time for a Smooch Series

... there's a project percolating

x

catered by Zabar's

Today I went to brunch at Shantha and Stephanie's house and met Shantha and Janak's parents in a delightful birthday-anniversary-new citizenship celebration.

There was a ridiculous quantity of cake. The appearance of Babka led us to a discussion of where one could buy kosher food in San Francisco (also a concern of our friend Moyshe Ben Fisted) and, ultimately, the revelation that the brunch had been more or less catered by Zabar's.

Now, another thing is: Rachel and I have been friends for approximately 14 years and, thus, I have also known Stephanie, her sister, for about that long. And Rachel and I met Janak, I think, in 8th grade, several years before Stephanie and Shantha met and became best friends. It has become clear that we have a significant photo deficit for which we must compensate. Thankfully, digital cameras have become omnipresent in the intervening years and we are now free to indulge in as much manic documentation as we desire.





So, here is a merry photo of the fabulous band of siblings taken during our semi-spontaneous gathering of a bunch of Jews from New York in a sushi joint in San Francisco last February.



And a photographic homage to the place that brought us all together. Despite what you may think, that place is not Hunter, Stuyvesant, or even San Francisco.

It is, of course, Zabar's.

this is such a bloggy thing to do

Here's a little ramble on music and movies.

1) I am obsessed with Arvo Part's Spiegel im Spiegel. And I wish I had a recording of the Rachel's performance of it at Round Lake Auditorium in upstate NY this summer.

2) Here's a movie I'd really like to see:

Playtime
Directed by Jacques Tati Cast: Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek 1967, 126 min RESTORED 70MM PRINT!
Tati’s fourth feature and boldest experiment, the visionary Playtime (1967) was nearly three years in production. Its big budget included the cost of building vast glass and steel sets that represented the director’s jaundiced view of modern Paris…With Playtime’s monumental decor and complex choreographed gags taking place simultaneously in a constantly mutating space, Tati explored the possibilities of 70mm as they had never been utilized before.—Village Voice

It's playing at the Castro Theatre on Tuesday, August 22; but I will be in rehearsal.

3) When I've had enough of Spiegel im Spiegel for a little while, I switch over to Pulp. (betcha like that one, eh Yiannis?)

more Trannyshack photos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49897945@N00/sets/72157594230565675/

Lots of good ones about half way down the page

dressing room cuteness

This picture was also taken after the show. I didn't document the pre-show process, as I costumed myself largely in the 42nd Street Moon rehearsal studio bathroom after Big Love rehearsal.



Please excuse the big chunk of glitter attached to my face. Simply appalling.

Heh.

Trannyshack 8/8/06 - the evidence

Here are some post-show gems from Stevie Nicks Nite at Trannyshack.

Introducing...

Moyshe ben Fisted



Moyshe and Cousin Harold



Moyshe and Rachel



There was a torrent of flashes during the performance so I'm sure I'll see some action photos in the next couple of days.

Thanks to my fantastically supportive posse - Paula, Enrique, Jason, Mei Ann, Eugenie, Laura, Rachel, Jomy, Jesse, Kevin, Karl, Mia (whom I didn't actually see!), Harold, and Josh.

Thanks to Falsetta Knockers for the tighty whities.

Thanks to Hebrew National for the kosher meat (!) products.

And, of course, big, juicy thanks and sploshes to my talented and trashy partner in performance crimes, Fauxnique.



I'll be scraping spirit gum off my body for weeks.

and, finally, why you should never Google your siblings

http://www.brown.edu/Students/Alpha_Epsilon_Pi/index/profile.php?id=0208

Care to explain that picture, mon frere?

Ye Olde Skidmore Days

Joanna, Tony, Elli, and I on our way to the Rachel's performance at Round Lake Arts:



later that evening with me in Taka's fabulous hat and Tony with a rare form of giantism affecting only his hands:

one night only! X 2

1) TONIGHT, SUNDAY, AUGUST 6 @ 8 PM
final performance of The Danger of Bleeding Brown
Magic Theatre, Fort Mason
rock out with your (silicone) cock out - come in drag and get 2-for-1 tickets

http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org

2) TUESDAY, AUGUST 8 @ MIDNIGHT
My Trannyshack debut

I have graced Trannyshack many times as myself and in Enrique drag, but Tuesday marks my first official appearance as a performer.

presenting: Fauxnique and DNTBR (Drag Name To Be Revealed) in "Leather and Lace" by Stevie Nicks and Don Henley

Come out, come out, wherever you are!

http://www.trannyshack.com

for Paul

The other day I popped into the Pirate Supply Store at 826 Valencia - http://www.826valencia.org/store/ - and could just barely resist buying one of the Glass Eye Book sets.

http://www.826valencia.org/store/shop_eyeball_set3.html

They are beautiful, minuscule hand-crafted books full of glass eye trivia and care guidelines. The 1 3/4" tall books come with a glass eye and a leatherette pouch.

They're precious and exquisitely drawn and just the kind of peculiar little art project I wish I'd created myself.

And, of course, I wanted very much to send one to the only person I know who has a prosthetic eye.

I'm back from outer space!

I've been back in California for almost a month. Here's a little summary of the most exciting events:

1) teaching with foolsFURY - fantastic experience that deserves lengthy musings all its own
2) performing in our little fF salon on 7/22 - a wonderful format that accommodated a huge range of work
3) performing in The Danger of Bleeding Brown in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival
4) the start of Big Love rehearsals - a stellar group of people and Laley is really in her directoral element

What else?

I've been playing tennis with Tony and Rachel, dancing every day, and gearing up to resume some more rigorous conditioning work.

I'm making my official debut (as opposed to my numerous spontaneous appearances) on the Trannyshack stage this Tuesday. Fauxnique and I are putting together a duet for Steve Nicks night.

stay tuned!